Re: Ceratopsid controversy

[Stephan Pickering <stefanpickering2002@yahoo.com>]

REPLY: I think you should heed Mary/Mickey's advice to
me, and sustain a more professional attitude toward
various ideas, i.e., leave personalities out of this,
Jaime. I hang my "star" on no-one; I have been
studying dinosaurs since 1954, and am able to
distinguish between data, belief, hominids. UMI has
been offering dissertations for sale for quite
sometime, as Dissertation Abstracts makes clear, and
Dawn Adams's fine work -- a cross-disciplinary
dissertation derived from Kevin Padian's paleontology
laboratory and the Department of Engineering at U.C.
Berkeley  -- was available for sale (even without
on-line services), by telephone or by mail, in 1985
when I purchased it (after Dawn told me it was
available). One did NOT then, nor now, need "dozens of
institution contacts" to telephone or mail a letter to
University Microfilms to obtain any dissertation.  Her
work has been known to several ceratopsian
investigators since 1984, and she published an
abstract of her deductions in Journal of Vertebrate
Paleontology (as I recall, she gave a brief
presentation at an SVP meeting). This is NOT to
diminish in any way the brilliant, independent work of
Gregory Paul & Per Christiansen (I am presuming both
scholars know of her dissertation by now).
Dissertations are, often, a rich treasure-trove, as it
were, of data and research on dinosaurs, which I
continue to obtain, analyze, when they become known to
me. This is part of the scientific process: research,
analyze, double-check. Dawn Adams was able to
demonstrate excellent experiments predicated upon
actual engineering principles using ceratopsian
analogues, and she does, indeed, richly deserve credit
for quite fascinating inferences on the forelimb
biomechanics of ceratopsian taxa.
One final word (my last posting for the day): there is
no "ceratopsid controversy", only questions as to the
locomotion of different ceratopsian dinosaurs.
Cheers, Jaime.
Chazak/strength in dialogue.
STEPHAN PICKERING / Chofetz Chayim ben-Avraham
Dinosaur Fractals Project
*******************************************************
--- "Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Stephan Pickering (stefanpickering2002@yahoo.com)
> wrote:
> 
> <Dawn Adams, 1989. Structure and function in the
> ceratopsian forelimb.
> Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. California Berkeley,
> 1-379.
> 
> Others have investigated the subject --
> unfortunately, without giving Dawn
> the credit she richly deserves. Her dissertation is
> available at
> University Microfilms International.>
> 
>   This would only be true if she actually published.
> Paul's work on
> galloping was based on mechanical methods he and Per
> Christiansen did on
> their own, independant. Just becauyse there is an
> earlier dissertation
> (unpublished, I might add, and requiring dozens of
> institution contacts
> which at the time, UMI did not offer this service
> online) does not mean
> other people will know about it. Adams will get
> credit if her work is
> used, and if it is pertinent, not out of date, etc.
> Be careful which star
> you hang your hopes on. Science is about _data_, not
> people, and certainly
> not about _belief_.
> 
>   Cheers,
> 
> =====
> Jaime A. Headden
> 
>   Little steps are often the hardest to take.  We
> are too used to making leaps in the face of
> adversity, that a simple skip is so hard to do.  We
> should all learn to walk soft, walk small, see the
> world around us rather than zoom by it.
> 
> "Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B.
> Medawar (1969)
> 
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